Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I revisited Israel, east Jerusalem and the West Bank, just before the Palestinian elections, and was taken round by five marvellous Jewish and Israeli NGOs. The message I got from them was loud and clear, quite apart from the evidence of one's own eyes. Unless the issues of the Hebron settlement of the West Bank, the cantonisation of the West Bank, the 600 checkpoints in the West Bank and the humiliation of the Palestinians in the West Bank are addressed urgently, there is no hope whatever of keeping power, within the Hamas confederacy, in the hands of the moderates. Would the Government please urge the Americans to do something effective and visual about the roadmap to that end?

Lord Renton: I would appreciate that.